Engaging With Critique: Feminism and classism - Essay Example

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Extract of sampleEngaging With Critique: Feminism and classism

The issue of class and its relationship to feminism is one such intersection, and one deserving of specific examination as to its nature and history. Ultimately, that history shows that feminism responds to criticism from within, and as a movement has learned to engage with class issues more constructively than in the past. First- and second-wave feminism were movements born largely out of middle-class white culture, and as such concerned themselves with the problems that were visible from where they were sitting, if you will: employment, reproduction, self-actualization, and so on. These battles were, of course, worth fighting, but they tended to minimize or ignore the problems facing many women, and many men, who weren’t the kind of people to get invited to the drawing rooms of early feminists. This rank classism began to draw serious criticism during the second-wave period. The Combahee River Collective statement is a creation of the late 1970s, and speaks the political language of its time. It is generally thought of as a seminal document in the development of black feminism, but it can also be seen as a seminal document in the history of feminist self-critique. ...

Summary

The critique most often leveled at second-wave American feminism, apart from specious and absurd lines about bra-burning, is that it was essentially a movement for the liberation of middle-class white women…